It’s Time to Fix Open Source Bugs

Finding My First Bug

There are many opportunities available in the Open-Source development projects to contribute. Recently I have started looking at the list of bugs offered by Mozilla that is available to anyone who wants to start working on them. As I have skimmed through the list I have found a bug that was particular interesting to me. The bug is related to Firefox: Developer Tools: Framework.

This bug was recently published, which gave me a chance to be the first to work on it. However, before starting the process, I had to request a permission If I could contribute.

My task was to rename react files, which are located in certain folder to CamelCase Convention. For example, there is a file named “Notification-Box.js”, which needed to be rename that to “NotificationBox.js”, simple right? Thats what I though at the beginning but the entire process is not simple as it seems. This was a bit nerve-racking because it is my first time doing this, But Hey if you never try, you will never learn.

There are multiple documentation that I had to read in order to understand how to generate patches, push them into testing, and commands. I chose this bug because I wanted to get the fundamental experience on how to use the MozillaBuild and Mercurial.

You are probably wondering how long did it take for me to fix this? at the beginning I thought it wouldn’t take long because, how hard can it be renaming files? The entire process is not just about renaming but also is about testing, editing other files and learning certain commands etc. I’ve spend couple of hours every day and in total the process took 1 week. This was a great experience because I am learning on-the-go.

What I could recommend to whoever wants to start contributing on any project, is do NOT be afraid to speak up, if something interest you offer your help. If during the process you find the bug challenging or the task is not clear then speak up and ask questions!